By VERNON ROBISON
The Mesquite City Council; at a special meeting held Tuesday, May 18; voted to appoint former City Manager Andy Barton to fill the role of Interim City Manager. Barton will serve temporarily to allow time for a permanent replacement to be found for the position. The appointment is effective Monday, May 24 and is expected to run for a period of 120 days.
Barton will fill a vacancy left last week by former City Manager Aaron Baker who resigned the position abruptly on Wednesday afternoon, May 12.
Barton preceded Baker in the Mesquite City Manager position. He served in the position for about seven years from 2012 to 2019. Barton retired in September of 2019 and Baker took over the position at that time.
Mesquite Mayor Al Litman, who had stepped in to the City’s chief management role for the week since Baker’s resignation, said that he had approached Barton and requested he take the interim position.
“Of course, I know Mr. Barton well and he is great!” Litman said in a Wednesday morning interview with The Progress. “He knows the entire operation of the City and has an excellent working relationship with the staff. I just thought that he was the ideal candidate for this situation.”
Tuesday’s Special Meeting of the Council took all of about 15 minutes with the Interim City Manager appointment being the only item on the agenda.
Litman presented the nomination of Barton immediately after opening the meeting and then sought for the Council’s approval.
During council discussion, Councilman Brian Wursten said that he was pleased with the nomination. But he asked why a 120-day limit was being placed on the interim term. He expressed concern that it might take longer than that to find a permanent candidate.
Mesquite Human Resources Director responded expressing confidence that four months would ample time to contract with a recruiting agency and to conduct a nation-wide search for a qualified candidate in the position.
“The timeframe can be amended later on if we find that more time is needed,” added Acting City Attorney Adam Anderson.
During public comment on the item, Mesquite resident David Ballweg expressed an objection that a general public comment period was not allowed at the beginning of the meeting for items not on the agenda.
City Clerk Tracy Beck explained that, because the special meeting only had a single agenda item, the opening and closing public comment periods were not required by statute. Ballweg disputed this.
Ballweg’s comments centered around, what he expressed as a failure of the Council to support Baker during bitterly critical comments made against Baker at the May 11 Council meeting. These comments had condemned Baker for statements he made to local website Mesquite Citizen Journal regarding a complaint allegedly filed with the Attorney General about Mesquite Police Chief MaQuade Chesley. The critical public comments made that evening, as well as a multitude of other factors, were thought to have precipitated Baker’s sudden resignation last week.
“I want to express my outrage for the duplicity and lack of consistency in enforcing regulations before this council,” Ballweg said in his comment. “You allowed an organized group to attack Mr. Baker in this public forum, which would have been banned at any other meeting. Mr. Mayor, you should have stopped it. But you let it go on and you did not allow Mr. Baker to have his due process. You all sat there and allowed him to be railroaded and humiliated. No City employee should ever be exposed to that kind of conduct.”
Anderson interrupted Ballweg stating that the public comment period was for discussion on the agenda item only. This further enraged Ballweg.
“You didn’t allow an open public comment period at the start of the meeting as is customary,” Ballweg said. “Now you say it has to be against the agenda item and I can’t comment as I would in general comments. It seems like you are making up the rules as you go to protect this council.”
In the end, Council member Wes Boger made a motion to appoint Barton to the interim post. The motion was approved with a unanimous vote of the Council.
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7 thoughts on “City Council appoints Barton as Interim City Manager”
“Barnum & Bailey” have gone out of business but, the circus is alive and well in Mesquite!
A true “three ring debacle” led by Mayor Litman with no permanent city attorney, no permanent city manager, soon to be vacancy for a finance manager, with the center ring occupied by the highest paid city employee Police Chief McQuade accompanied by his “clown posse peace officer’s organization” known as the M.P.O.A !
It’s a show every bit worthy of peanuts , popcorn and cotton candy!
This troop of incompetent city administration officials, city employees and city council members need to allocate $30,000 to a “head hunter” to somehow schmooze someone into a city manager position in a 120 days because the City of Mesquite HR Department can’t do the job!
All this talk from city leaders in Mesquite about attracting new businesses and creating economic development in a city that more resembles a wild west town with an occupying force of peace officers to protect the casino properties and act as henchmen for the town council!
Every LDS Ward in the Mesquite Stake is bickering and fighting with every other LDS Ward .
The Fire Department is grossly undermanned and not adequately funded yet,they have money to pay for at least two more police officers!
And pay the police officers they do! Basic research on current Mesquite City Employee Salaries show that employees of the Mesquite Police Department hold 17 of the top 30 highest paying positions in Mesquite!
A whole lotta “LAW” and not much “ORDER”!
Sounds like Ballweg should stop whining and apply for the city manager job himself if he cares so much for his city.
Mr. Bishop you are wrong. Mr. Ballweg should be Mayor then we could clean out the police department that is running this city. From the Police Chief that shows he does not have the ability to manage a department (helping the rank and file create a hit piece with information not known to the public) to the MPOA that feels its spokesman, a city employee, can make threats to his boss during a public meeting and the Mayor did nothing to defend the City Manager. I think there is a fish market in city Hall.
Andy Barton is a well respected career city manager and a true gentleman. He and Mayor Litman will do a go job resolving this. The entire issue stems from a small group of rabble rousers with the sole purpose of stirring up trouble through a local blog. We know their names. They never offer solutions, just criticism. As to the police wages, compare them to OPD who make lots more and don’t have to carry a gun or fight with criminals on a daily basis. This whole thing is much to do about nothing.
There is a small group of carpers and complainers in Mesquite who will criticize city council members and especially Mayor Al Litman — no matter what they do. Dave Ballweg is a constant complaining voice, as is Herb Calhoun who commented above. Bringing Andy Barton back as interim city manager is a stabilizing move for the city. Ballweg and Calhoun know that — and didn’t criticize that fact — but they both found something else to harp about. They are not alone — some people can’t seem to get over the last election and continue to cast blame. We are exiting one of the worst years in world history — a crushing pandemic — and many people keep working through the issues as best they can. That includes our elected officials who endure these constant negative and critical voices — yet still keep doing their jobs. These naysayers and trouble makers have become tiresome. It would be great for our city if they’d give it a rest.
I checked with OPD regarding Ms Delgado’s comment: Mendis Cooper makes $261,000 with benefits, Richard Jones makes $181,000, Corey Dalley and Jon Jensen make $165,000 and so on. Nearly everyone at OPD, except the secretaries, make way over $100,000 plus very generous benefits. For the same period, the police chief in Mesquite made $118,000 plus benefits. Perhaps Ballweg and Calhoun can complain about that. Or complain to the Mesquite rep on the OPD board, Mike Young about rising electric bills.
Or are they just interested in continuing to fake conspiracy theories?
Mr. Martin Locke
I went to OPD meetings for over 8 years and even ran for a Board seat. I commented repeatedly at every opportunity about the pay scales at OPD. My point was that they made sure that OPD employees were the preverbial 1% salaries of the area and ignored the struggles of their customers to pay their power bills.. There are a lot of other issues that I raised over the years. NO ONE IN THIS TOWN CARED.. A couple years ago, they moved the meeting time to the middle of the afternoons and it made it impossible for me to drive to Overton to attend. So before you start throwing rocks at people, maybe you would make an effort to study the history and get some facts.. Did you vote for or against Question 3 in 2018. This would have broken the monopoly of where you bought your power,. This would have broken OPD’s monopoly. I suspect you voted against it because you believed the a the OPD propaganda. If you want to leave your blinders on, go ahead, but sir, you basically have no idea what you are talking about.